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Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Occupy in One Word: ENOUGH!

It's a great word, because it sums up the two sides of the #Occupy message.

Enough as in

No more.

We've had enough.

We've taken it up to here.

We want no more of the effluent that our rulers are throwing at us.

No more of the broken society, the lack of even handed justice, the ugliness

Enough of the news:

Enough of wars, of bad economics, of unemployment, poverty and homelessness

Enough of crime, of miscarriages of justice, of deaths covered up whether at Deepcut Barracks or elsewhere.

Enough of repressive policing.

Enough of the people taking the blame for the faults of the bankers.

Enough of the cuts, the student loans, and the 1001 cuts affecting women, children, poor and elderly

Enough of making ends meet while vast amounts of money are being hoovered out of the national economy into tax havens.

The economic system we live in is slowing up like a computer with a virus in it, a virus which is doing its own thing, taking up memory and processing power.

A virus which needs to be removed. A bit of software that needs to be identified and quarantined.

It is important for us to realise that our enemy is not the specific people in power, even though many of them will need to lose their jobs, and some of them will need to be put through the courts.

It's not specific human individuals, it's their delusional thinking that needs to be overcome.

The virus in the prevailing mindset will run any number of scripts, but here are a few such assumptions and memes to look for:

Money is more important than whether everyone has food on the table. (It isn't)

There is no such thing as society (Yes there is)

Individualism is a valid ideology. (No it isn't. We are social animals).

It is necessary to expand economically forever (Impossible)

If you try to change the system it will break (It's going to break anyway)

Inequality is not a problem. (Yes it is)

If you try to tax the rich, they will leave (Not if it is done globally)

Leave it to the people who know. They will sort it out. (We have. They haven't)

If you regulate the corporations, they will leave. (Not if it is done globally)

The News of the World is a little local difficulty (No it isn't)

Protest is useless (Not so. Most if not all of our rights and freedoms have come from protest, and if all the people who say "Protest doesn't work" would join the protest, it would succeed)

And so on.

Enough of the malfunctioning software.

But what's the remedy? How do we quarantine and/or neutralise this virus?

The solution can be put in the same word as the problem: Enough.
The concept of Enough, running like a piece of software in all of our heads, is what is needed.
We need to learn how to appreciate when we have had enough.

Enough to drink, enough to eat, enough to live on.

We need to know when there are enough humans in the world.

Enough noise

Enough toys

Enough stuff.

Now this changeover from the mania of 21st century consumerism is going to take a bit of work, we can't deny it.
In fact it is going to take a lot of work.
A lot.

Which is good, because we have loads of people out of work.
The Green Wage Subsidy will get us going on that work.

It will need a lot of thought, but there is no shortage of books and reports on society and economy.Here's a 15-point starter.
We just need to make a synthesis of the many threads and proposals to bring about a more equal society.

And we need to create channels of communication between the people and our Government. Lobbying of MPs is OK, but it needs to be amplified, and we need to establish a regular, continuous conversation between the people and Government, where the debate and the information can be passed on directly.